Floods, leaks and dodgy bulls
I’d hate to be the kind of blogger who has a bad day then proceeds to tell the world about it - my rubbish day is as nothing compared to the rest of the world’s proper rubbish days. Let alone those for whom every day is pretty rubbish.
But I tell you what - today (so far, its 8pm) has been fairly rubbish. An Ill-advised trip to town from which it took 90 minutes to get home through cancelled trains, stuck buses, and flooded rivers blocking roads.
Took some phone pics in Bournville after the taxi we’d resorted to couldn’t go any further of which this one is the only nicely dramatic one:
When we got home we found the roof had leaked which is annoying but if you want to see some proper dramatic pics then go take a look at Josh Hart’s pics. He lives near the river Rea in Selly Park which burst its banks.
However, the most extraordinary sight I saw all day though was the bull statue outside the Bullring in Birmingham. I knew they’d painted in silver (why I don’t know and don’t care) but look up close and it’s possibly the worst paint job known to man. I think it was best left alone….
I hope to finish my rubbish day by watching a rubbish film, Cloverfield. It really couldn’t get any worse could it?
Did it rain while I was away?
Back from 10 days away to find the plot not starved of water and wilting, as I’d feared, but flourishing and bountiful and generally gone kinda crazy. I guess it rained in Birmingham while we were away.
The courgettes were half-way to marrows and there were 4 cauliflowers ready to pull. Before we left they had tiny heads on them but now had almost gone too far. Already had one in a potato and cauliflower curry. A couple of the lettuces were close to going to seed so we pulled them and are working our way through lettuce based sandwiches and salad in order to get through it. Runner beans aplenty of course but also some lovely succulent peas - mmmm.
I pulled a few main crop potatoes just to see how they were doing. Quite well as it happens. I need to learn how to store them properly when I pull the lot as we’ve about 4 rows of them (that equals a lot of spuds)
At the back of the plot the blackberries are coming in - again, lots of. I might try to learn to make jam.
The Daily Good Life
Led by Lucy at the Smallest Smallholding a group of allotment/small-holding bloggers have got together to create a Youtube channel about our attempts to live off the land to various degrees (in my case living off the land amounts to eating lots of rhubarb and new potatoes). I’m one of them despite or maybe because of my newcomer status. The channel will take a while to get populated but I’ve done my ‘intro’ video which is on my own channel and then play-listed on the Daily Good Life.
BTW - this is my first attempt at home-movie making. The camera was a present for my 40th birthday at the weekend. It’s a Canon MD235 - I’m sticking with DV tape for the meantime, great quality for under £200 vs paying £500+ for same quality as a hard disk cam.
Allotment Plot update - June 2008
Time for an update on how our growing is going. I thought I’d start off by a quick explanation about the real reason we’ve become such keen gardeners. The map below shows exactly how close our plot is to my back door (215 feet actually). If it wasn’t for that fact we wouldn’t pay it half as much attention.
So in late June our plot is beginning to mature nicely. I’ve already mentioned our lovely new spuds - lots more to come there as I’ve dug up only about a fifth of the plants. Despite picking lots and lots of rhubarb there’s still some to go. I did bake an apple and rhubarb crumble which was nice (touch of ginger and cinnamon) so I’ll make use of the last of the season’s pickings soon.
Runner beans are coming along nicely and flowering although the peas seem a little stunted. A neighbouring tenant gave me some leeks from France which are in the ground and haven’t died - a success by anyone’s standards. I stole some sweetcorn seeds from my neighbouring tenant (he offered me a some seeds to sow and I put the whole packet in - not what he meant, sorry) and they’ve come through but it’s very late to be planting these so I’m not even sure they’ll be big enough to pick come autumn.
We’ve now got lots of lettuce of many varieties. Both on the patio and on the plot itself. There’s not a single slug chomp on any of them and they taste delicious.
Finally, our cauliflowers are blooming (no heads yet though), some cabbages are in, our onions aren’t too far away from coming up and I’ve got tons of main crop potatoes for harvesting at the end of the summer (so many that they’ll no doubt be a give-away of those so get your orders in). Oh and we’ve got a couple of pumpkins on the go as well.
The plot itself still needs a tidy-up at the front and the back half of it is still completely overgrown although there are raspberries and redcurrants there for the picking.
Tour of Bournville Race 1
My number is already looking a little out of focus after race one of the 2008 Tour of Bournville. In fact I discovered its difficult-to-get-off green and black ink all over my hands and arms when I had a post-race shower. Seeing as we’re using the same number for all five races I’m going on the basis that it’ll be unreadable by Friday so this can act as a record of what number I am.
I’ll do a brief race report here although I apologise to non-Bournville Harriers types for whom the names I mention below will mean little. To the rest of us of course they represent the giants of the South Birmingham amateur running world - or something like that.
To cut a long story short race one was 10k approx (general consensus was that it was about 9.5k or less) around the paths, parks and playing field of Bournville. What a lovely route it was as well with plenty of variation to the terrain, hardly a car in sight and a nasty hill to finish on. A field of about 30 of us took part of all abilities in what were great conditions (for running that is, coolish, bit of drizzle). The full results will appear over on the main Bournville harriers site but I’m pleased to say I came in 2nd in 36min 49sec about 20 seconds behind Sean Rose and ahead of Andy and James, 3rd and 4th respectively. In the women’s race Sally edged out Marianne and I fully expect the two to be closely matched all week. The rest of the runners came in close behind and I swear, each and every one of them seemed to be putting on a sprint finish.
Tomorrow it’s 7 miles on a hilly course. I’ve already got a pretty big time gap to close if I’m to challenge the race leader but believe me, he’s in my sights….
Pics should appear are already appearing here and I’ll add I’ve added a couple to this blog as well.
More tomorrow.